Stephen A. Smith And Skip Bayless Are Stealing Each Other's Debate Partners
Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless co-hosted First Take on ESPN from 2012 to 2016. Bayless departed for FS1 in 2016 to create Undisputed, which airs head-to-head against his former program.
Technically, Smith and Bayless have competed against each other for the past seven years. (Though more for reaction than ratings, given three-to-four times the people watch ESPN than FS1.) But it wasn't until this summer the two started to compete with each other.
Undisputed will unveil a new format on Aug. 28. FS1 will introduce a rotation of analysts to debate Bayless in lieu of Shannon Sharpe, who left the show in June.
First Take adopted a similar format in 2021 after Smith forced off Max Kellerman. Bayless also debated a rotation of analysts before Smith joined First Take in 2012.
Nonetheless, the changes to Undisputed turned Bayless and Smith into recruiters this summer.
"RICHARD SHERMAN! KEYSHAWN JOHNSON! MICHAEL IRVIN! NEW DREAM TEAM ON THE NEW UNDISPUTED. NEW LIL WAYNE INTRO SONG, "GOOD MORNING.," Bayless posted on X Monday.
Irvin and Johnson spent the past two football seasons debating Smith on First Take. Irvin guested on Mondays to recap the NFL weekend. Johnson appeared on Tuesdays following Monday Night Football.
And though ESPN laid off Johnson and declined to bring back Irvin (following sexual misconduct allegations), Smith disagreed with both decisions.
In July, Stephen A. publicly campaigned for the network to give Irvin a second chance. Smith said Irvin and Johnson are "like brothers to him" and helped elevate First Take.
Yet Smith will now compete with Irvin and Johnson and Bayless, three of his former debate partners.
But joining Smith will be Shannon Sharpe, Bayless' former partner.
ESPN expects Sharpe to sign a deal to appear on First Take on Mondays and Tuesdays during the football season. Sources tell OutKick the deal is not done but should be by the end of the week.
Skip Bayless debated Smith for four years. He debated Sharpe for nearly seven years. Now, Smith and Sharpe plan to team up against Bayless (figuratively, of course).
The parallels of the Monday Night War, when WWF and WCW spent the 1990s poaching away each others' wrestlers, are not lost upon us:
So, don't expect the poaching to stop with Irvin, Johnson, and Sharpe. During the NBA season, Bayless will debate Rachel Nichols. Ironically, Nichols competed with Smith as ESPN's lead voice of the NBA. (Before she was fired as a DEI causality, of course.)
FS1 EVP Charlie Dixon told SportsBusinessJournal that the network expects to add more basketball analysts to the rotation this winter.
Social media users have speculated Jalen Rose could be one of them. Rose co-hosted NBA Countdown with Smith for the past two seasons. Like Keyshawn Johnson, ESPN laid Rose off in June.
It would seem unlikely Bayless would want to debate Rose after he mocked Bayless for his high school basketball career. Then again, Rose's encounter with Bayless wasn't any more awkward than Bayless' clash with Sherman.
Bayless vs. Sherman:
Bayless vs. Rose:
If Bayless can forgive Sherman to spite Stephen A., he probably could Rose, as well. (Note: Rose isn't good on television.)
Moving forward, Undisputed plans to put less emphasis on one-on-one debates. Dixon says the show could feature as many as four panelists on the set at the same time.
“What we realized is once we widened that show and added more gears to it, you saw the results immediately,” Dixon said. “People really have a longer appetite to consume content when there’s more variant to it.”
At this point, Bayless has not made efforts to include Max Kellerman in the lineup.
Which is strange. There's no better way to increase tensions between the two shows than for Bayless to give a platform to the person whose career Stephen A. ruined.